a jewish and a space country as it does achieve a two-stage solution on that basis. >> paul mcmullen published a new voice for israel fighting for the survival of the jewish state. jeremy ben-ami, founder of j street is the author. ..

over the holidays, count we are considering all kinds of options, but we have really delighted to have such a large audience here tonight for this first event of january. the holiday season i might just say a word about that. it was really very encouraging for us, particularly as new owners. we had sales while access to the previous december. and that has been true of a number of independent bookstores around the country. of course there are number of challenges ahead wit e-books and online sales, though we are very encouraged and we are very grateful for your continued loyalty and teacher patronage.

we are quite excited to meet frank and his work "pity the billionaire." the subtitle is a hard time swindle likely comeback of the right. there is certainly no question about it. the rate is back. as unlikely as that may have seemed back in november 2008 when barack obama was the lack to and democrats at hand control to both houses in congress. tom looks at this resurgence of the right and the reasons for it and what it portends for the future. now of course a big political year is just getting started and we wouldn't be politics & prose if we were planning on featuring a number of political books of the month ahead and holding a number of discussions about this election season. we are very fortunate to have time to kick things off for us.

as a journalist and commentator, thomas writing about politics and culture in the united states for some time now. he has a phd in history at the university of chicago and a reputation as one of the most articulate, corrupt voices on the left. he was a former opinion columnist for "the wall street journal" and founding editor of the bachelor magazine. and by the way, i was just informed that we will soon be carrying the magazine. [laughter] and since late 2010, he has been writing a monthly easy chair column for harper's magazine. thomas and the washington area and has appeared at politics & prose at least for the last two of his several books. what is the matter with kansas, which was published in 2004 and the ranking crew, which came out in 2008. he has written -- this is his

fifth book and is also edited a couple of anthologies. in this new book, tom argues that the right has managed to resurrect it up largely by taking advantage of public anger about the disastrous condition of the economy. they have offered and appealing narrative about what went wrong, placing the blame not on wall street, but on government. rather than acknowledge notions of what they've are in tough economic replay or badly undercut by realities of access and mismanagement, and they haven't tom's view up the ante on become even more ideological, even more distant about their free-market idealism. this idea that at a time of economic collapse brought on by financial heiress possibility of lax regulation, people should embrace the notion of free-market even more blindly

strikes on this outrageous. a notch and he says that the public had ended dozens of nuclear power plants in the days that are the three-mile island disaster. or we had react to it to watergate by making richard nixon a national hero. sounds crazy doesn't it? of course remembered noneconomic issues continue to the ongoing strength of the concert event in the united states. no doubt issues such as abortion and immigration will fact tour this year's election campaign and helped galvanize the right, but the economy is almost certain to be a major subject of contention and tom's book makes important points to keep in mind. he shows for instance how the republicans at least so far have been more successful than democrats in defining terms of the debate and his essential argument about the right having provided a compelling vehicle

for popular anger is a significant consideration. i'm sure tom will have other interesting points to make this evening i will turn and make a phone hang in a second. first let me remind you all please to censor cell phones if you haven't already. tom clancy speak for 15 or 20 minutes and then he will take questions. if you have a question, please step up to the microphone that we have been the center. as you can tell, we have c-span this evening and would like to record all of our events to make them available on the website. so now please join me in welcoming thomas frank. [applause] >> the first thing i want to say i was very kind of practically all those things, but we have to also remember independent bookstores that politics & prose. speaking as an author, these places are absolutely essential to the literary life of this

nation. and it is a great thing that brad is keeping this place going and let's hope it goes for a long, long, long time. water, awesome. i hope it isn't fizzy. let's get our cell phones off. and so, what i came near to talk about tonight was the confused era that we are living in. this time when americans are rising up against imaginary threats and rally to economic theories that they understand only and because he is turned. i am going to talk tonight about a country where fears of a radical takeover became epidemic, even though radicals themselves have long since ceased to play any role in the national life. a country where ideological nightmares conjured up by tv

entertainers came to seem more vivid and more compelling than the contents of the news pages. but if you look at it from a different give, this is actually a miraculous time. it is a great awakening as some people put it. it's a revival crusade in which the gospel is the old-time religion of the free market. it is an era of grassroots rebellion and the incredible recovery of the conservative political movement from the gloomy to center seat. i must confess there is indeed some miraculous, something astonishing about this recovery. consider the barest facts. this is the fourth successful conservative uprising to happen in my lifetime. each one of them all apostolate popular bluster. each one standing slightly wayward of his predecessor and

each one helping to compose another chapter in a historical epic that i used to call the great knack lash, but others called the age of reagan at the age of greed or the acerbic it can send fence. they do about it this it now been 32 years since the supply-side revolution conquered the city, since the free-market face became the dogma of the nation's ruling class shared by large numbers of democrats as well as republicans. since then we have lived through decades of deregulation and de-unionization and privatization and free trade agreements with every kind. their free-market ideal has been project them into every corner of the nation's life. universities try to put themselves on a market-based putting these days. sutter hospitals, electric utilities come in museums, the post office, cia, u.s. army.

and now after all of this has been going on for decades, we have a people's uprising demanding that we embrace the free-market ideology, right? and this only a short time after that ideology that though it into the greatest economic catastrophe in living memory. amazing is right. that's the worse. i'm likely would also be right. preposterous to be even greater. and back in 2008, the country's financial system suffered at the break down and worship the result is nearly every serious observer agrees that the decades long effort to roll back to supervision and encourage financial experimentation. and that being sampled and quickly plunged the nation in the entire world into the worst recession in 1930s. as a stand here tonight, the main political response to these

events are a campaign to roll back regulations, strip government employees have the right to organize and wisconsin, ohio now and in vienna and clamped down on federal spending. so let us give the rebels there do. let's acknowledge the conservative comeback of the last couple years is indeed something unique in the history of american social movements. a mass conversion to free-market eerie as a response to hard times. before the president's economic slump, i had never heard of a recession victims developing a whole showcase for chicago school economics or a spontaneous hostility to the words of franklin roosevelt. before this current recession, people who had been cheated by bankers almost never took dedication to demand that tankers be freed from right tape and scrutiny of the law. before 2009, demanding the bread

line did not customarily we put a man lounging on his yacht. the achievement of this thing is even more remarkable when we remember the prevailing opinion climate of 2008. after the disasters of the george w. bush presidency had culminated in the catastrophe on wall street, the citizens of our beautiful beltway consensus plan, that we all agreed on the direction which the nation was traveling. our apartment leaders had seen this movie before in a new hole is supposed to go. the plates are shifting, conservative decades long reign was added and peered into her of legal activism was on hand. this is the unambiguous mandate of history. at least it is supposed to be as unmistakable as the gigantic crowds that gathered to hear barack obama speak as he traveled the campaign trail. you could no more defied this

plot line the pundits thought and you could write checks on the bank account. now the thinking behind all of this was straightforward cause-and-effect stuff. the 2008 financial crisis had clearly discredited the conservative movement signature free-market ideas or so the story went. scandal and competence had wrecked conservatism's ethical claims. and the movement's taste for strident rhetoric was supposedly repugnant to a new generation of post-partisan voters. besides, there is the obvious historical analogy that was on everyone's lips back in 2008. he had just been through a replay of the financial disaster of 1929 and now the pundits, the automatic left turn of 1932 was at hand with the part of franklin roosevelt being played by the newly elect barack obama. for the republican party meanwhile department approved script went like this.

the gop had to moderate itself or face a long period the relevant. remember how to use to say that just a few years ago? with the polite speaking world except it are leaders of the right was repentance. they assumed conservatives would be humbled at the disasters that befall a new champion, george w. bush, that republicans would confess their errors and make case for political center. the world expected contrition. what we got was the opposite delivered on the point of the bayonet instead of complying with the new speed limit from the strategists at the rate hit the gas. instead of seeking accommodations, they went on a quest for ideological purity. instead of elevating their remaining centrists to positions of power, they purged them. and rather than acknowledge that they have enjoyed their 30 years

behind the wheel, they declared that they had never really got their turn in the first place. the true believers had never actually been in complete control so the conservative ascendancy to historians talked about never existed. all the journalistic industry will work on the subject had been so much liberal propaganda and therefore most importantly the disastrous events of recent years cast no discredit on conservative ideas. so the solution was to reconsider deregulation. it is to double down and work even more energetically for the laissez-faire utopia. here's the water. this is a moment where i drink water. [laughter] it's written into the script. the social patterns of hard times are supposed to be a simple thing, as impersonal and mechanical as the forces that shatter our fact grief and pay

down the price of our stocks. the markets disintegrate, foreclosures began in before you know it, people are out in the streets screaming for blood. the idols of our past become targets of derision. we demand the government do something about it, that they punish the perps, rescued the dems. we look for insurance against further catastrophe and we look for stricter supervision of the economy to make sure it never happens again. or at least that's how it went in the 1930s. when the catastrophe becomes the depression taught as certain legislative seats will follow almost automatically in its wake. unemployment insurance will be extended, extended again. massive investment in public works. commissions will be named to investigate the causes of the crisis. agencies will get setup to keep people from losing their houses or foreclosure and as the economy falls apart, the function goes with also also rediscover a certain

neighborliness come a sense of community and even of collectivism that comes from shared preservation. the peak will hurt by the downturn will take action on their own behalf. you see union organizing in a wave of strikes sweeping the country in response to the complete breakdown of capitalism's promise and the people hurt by the downturn will protest of course, voicing discontent in public places like the striking farmers in iowa in 1932 who claim to be upholding the spirit of the boston tea party as they dumped out the contents of tricks to try to cross their picket lines. and in 2008, 2000 night, sure enough it looks at the pattern is repeating itself. i slump again with the slump similar to the 1920s.

and what's more it's any coincidence that that thinks modern-day miss behavior began just as the depression. inc. regulations got repealed or were allowed to go on employers. and, like in the awful days of 1932, average people are rising up again in out rage, fuming about the money men who drive the nation into the ditch and the politicians to step either cronies of the rest of us lost their shirts. dirty style populism has made a triumphant turn to juxtapose americans against an uncaring predatory world. should you happen to hear an homage to the spirit of the boston tea party nowadays, the demands that you know will be exactly the opposite of those striking iowa farmers back in 1932. what makes the rebels blood boil today is not the flight of the indebted property owner, but the

possibility that such losers as they call them might escape their predicament, but the government may step in and do the very things that those iowa farmers wanted to do 80 years ago. that sounded he nears must take seven years. that seems like a good deal to us nowadays. but burns are modern-day populaces anyone has that air can the human affairs might be arranged and other days. the government is somehow all our neighbor to evade a common disaster, that some mortgage remediation though might let him out of the hard times that he so clearly deserved. the ones moved to protest today are on liquidation of sizzled herbert hoover's to call them. the words i saw him aside at the first tea party protests back in early 2009, your mortgage is not

my problem. now how did conservative than that this amazing reversal that were talking about. i learned the lessons of the great depression during times of economic collapse, the conservative movement figured out no one loves a defender of orthodoxy or a self-appointed spokesmen for society's rightful rulers. when the economic collapse of 2008 and 2009 came along, conservatives and positioned itself as a protest movement with an uprising of standard signifiers. people protesting banks, corporations and people yelling through bullhorns, people organizing boycotts. there are marches on washington and the talk about strikes of the producer class, just like in the 30s. and what's more, the newest right cast itself as the people's movement with no

leaders, right? a movement so profoundly democratic, so virtuously rank-and-file, so very punk rock that it was diddley against leaders, he movement downright incensed with the trail had been sold out by traditional politicians regarding its authenticity. and about glenn beck, the former tv host who asserted the emblematic figure out all this stuff used to ritually be a man beyond partisanship. he's deliberately ignored the 1963 march on washington and at one point down on the mall in his career on fox news he suggested he might have voted for hillary clinton had she won the democratic nomination for the presidency. if you watched them closely enough that i spend a lot of time doing so that you don't

have to. repay a billionaire and many don't have to. what you find is a constantly pilfers left-wing imagery and arguments. he has this critique of the public relations industry that seems to come straight from the pages of norm chomsky. or think about his famous charge of racism against president obama, which was sort of the clumsy attempt to use the weapon that conservatives feel is always directed against they themselves. the newest right also glories to imagine themselves as the. for example, sort of this entire geography of persecution that hovers like a halo around the figure of sarah palin. that is your brand image. she is the persecuted one. sometimes this theater can get pretty broke.

and one that's 2010 novel, the overton and i'm sure you can buy a copy right here. but if you go read his novel but you'll find that conservative activists are imagined to be the guns of everything big brother can throw at him. they get thrown in jail the injury savage beatings by police. they get spotter reported to sign up for this kind of fictional or pitcher out of meetings are calm infiltrated by police five and hm prosecutors. the descendents i suppose that the real-life threats caused they used to have in cities like chicago to go around trying to suppress left-wing radicals back in the day. they misspoke of course the idea is they are now cracking down on the right.

similar fears -- it's fictional by the way. and never really have been. similar fears, all the time of the larger conservative movement culture. in 2009 the populist right is swept by this panic that the new democratic administration was preparing concentration camps for conservatives. this turned out to not be true. i'm sure it's a big surprise to you. [laughter] i did a little research i discovered neither federal nor state government have criminalized they have used force over the years to labor organizers to keep minorities and disrupt antiwar movements. it suits the right to imagine itself as the relevant time. which now doubt enhanced as the distant movement taken on a merciless establishment.

i want to start their unsorted change subjects because it's a lot of poking holes in things that conservatives say. i've got a whole book of a here. these are dark times, but there's some humor in it. these guys off the facts when they feel like it. they swipe symbols from the other side, delay. they illustrate arguments that economics was fairytales. yes they actually do that. and the reasoning that you hear on your favorite radio shows sounds like something from the brainwashing session. it is preposterous. it is content to bowl. you know what it's better than quiet it's better than nothing. now, let's remember one more time the original cataclysms whose memories today poison our

every political moment. the financial crisis in the bailout. and remember the culprit of those cataclysms. i mean, the ones who got her economy were not punished for what they did. they were rewarded. and i guess i don't mean that got away with a slap on the wrist. i mean they would lay down with billions in our blessings. and today they are rich in a way that you and i will never be able to comprehend. and all this happened, remember, courtesy of our government, the officials of which i can get themselves understand as if nothing untoward happened at all. the bailout money will be weak, nothing to worry about. experts understand this. you could not have contrived a scenario better calculated to destroy public faith in american institutions. i mean what is the point of hard work of scrapping for it few dollars more in some lousy hourly wage when dishonest

financial ledger demand is so profitable? i play by the rules when they obviously don't apply to everybody, umlauts and crooks and bullies take on society greatest reward. the bailouts create it a perfect situation, a perfect environment for populism in the jacksonian tradition for old-fashioned calamity howlers, for jeremias region against the corrupt and powerful. i'm one of our two political factions in this country took to the task immediately and with relish. they tossed in convenient leaders overboard george w. bush. he's out of here. excommunicated. they declared war on the ruling class. the assembled megaphones in in the part and give voice to the people's outrage. with other faction, the actual political descendents of jackson

and truman and roosevelt failed to rise to the occasion. they didn't have much to say. they didn't seem to get the circumstances called for something different. they could not in race requirements at the moment even as fighting hard times was once the very reason for being. and take the bailouts for example. there are a hundred different ways that situation could have been dealt with. each one of them less than an outrage than the one shows by bush and had paul fenestra shree secretary in the bush administration. upon taking office, president obama didn't break with paulson's campaign, didn't lay plans to investigative powers over american life. instead, he took hints to let the world know that he embraced the policy and strategy. made it his own and each time political adversity came in the

following years were almost each time, a few exceptions, but pretty much each time, the obama team would compromise in the direction of wall street as though those who needed to be mollified. now, the folly of this for us as citizens, i says americans, economic actors should the plane by now. it might also lead to electoral disaster, and probably never occurred to the president's tough-minded look with a serious come off as hard as he got after all, catering to wall street failed. it brought victory to bill clinton. coming to the way the market is regarded as high-minded stance in the 1990s, the statesmanlike knowledge of and for the obvious validity of conservative economic ideas. the advent of hard times because

i reasoning as obsolete as a floppy disk. other democrats apparently didn't know it, the great recession we polarized all the compass points. nothing worked the way it used to. it was no longer about left versus right. all of a sudden it was about special interests versus common interests. this was the moment for a second fdr, not into. now, sometimes when i watch the washington democrats in action, my mind goes back to the tragically incompetent staff of world war i. you know, you come to politics & prose and listen to tom franken makes a world war i technology. thus was that she are self-employed. i watch these guys and think of the british generals back then ordering assault after gigantic

assault, only to see their armies annihilate it one after another. but still they kept ordering another round of the exact same thing, playing by the gentlemanly rules of combat, never doing anything remotely clever and always completely surprised when you decide it should use them to 20th century warfare and brutal new way. and sometimes i wonder what will look like when the other side, when the new revitalized right actually finally gets that chance to do what they want with the nation. maybe finally with the punjab, maybe the rightward drift of the last 40 years will stop them and the nation will finally were her scores. or maybe as the nation clambers further down into the slope or a spit college to be a, the thinking of the market minded

will continue to evolve and before long they will have discovered a course that certain once controversial arms must be amputated immediately. what are interstate highways national part the wasteful subsidies for leeches who want to be paying their own way, what is disaster relief at a power grab by losers who can't get themselves out of the path of the hurricane. you know social security will go as the essential injustice to protect during the week dawns on them. why should society pay for someone who hasn't been responsible imported crude grams like you're supposed to do. every problem the editorialists fretted about today will get worse of course. inequality, global warming, financial bubbles, but it will not matter. america would go chasing the only ideology the country has left down into that pit,

defeating arcadia at all against all. thank you very much. [applause] >> there's something going on back here. is everything okay back there. okay, we are going to do questions. they have set up a microphone here. is that what they're supposed to do? and i brought a pen to sign books. so after we're done with this, i'll sign with everyone. who's first? yes, sir. >> i've been staying here all long anyways. so i'll go first. so, i have some thoughts and i'm just interested in your response to don. it looks as though the other

side knows that a good offense is better than a good defense. the language he needs better. it is like how can you not to be perfectly honest it's a choice promise, but how can you not be pro-life? the free market, what is the opposite of a free market if and not feudalism? >> we can talk about that. they met the language of free-market -- i mean come brings about these wonderful images how can any person american either by speaking clack the democrats have done a wonderful job of staying in there.passives and not doing an offense themselves. one last thing which for some and i discovered on an app called show achaeans, where people vote on stuff. it seems the democrats on the question is what should you do, compromise or give it your all

or go for a? it looks like 70% of democrats want to compromise and 80% of republicans want to go for it. >> it's an amazing device. which is a scenario built for defeat. >> they call a game theory. if you put those two groups together, who is going to win? the people who believe in compromise is part of their innermost principle or the people who are like we are going to win. i mean, tom delay wrote about this in his memoir. i'm sure you carry the tom delay memoir of course, but we would move further to the right just because clinton was triangulating. if we moved the goalposts as much further, he has to triangulate that much further. that is his stated strategy of everybody in the country knows that. it's incredibly easy to play the dude.

all right. enough of that. but let, maybe you think i'm going hard in the democrats, but i don't think i am. i think they are called to centrism in hallucinatory in its own way and laissez-faire. [applause] >> i certified you guys would like that. it comes from political science rather than economics. but they are very similar in all sorts of ways, these two sort of coltish bass. besides i'm concerned, they're both completely discredited by the events of the last decade or so. yes, sir. >> is spoken eloquently to it, to give us a review of which terminated or gave birth to this year's picture alluding to. >> fears -- well, fear was natural in my opinion in 2008, 2009.

i mean, i was scared. and there's many conservatives. by the way, katie to billionaire. i went to a lot of these ballets and they spoke about fear all the time. grampian have been making it seem much more germanic and a wise. they tend to shift it. instead of talking about distraction they talk about the stateside since they instead of worrying about the power of wall street, they are worried about obama that it tater. and the classic example is there talk about death. there was all kinds of personal data and is out of control.

the federal government is to create a deficit in the federal government is in a recession. okay it's my opinion, but we see is is the redirection of fear the real culprit the real culprit the real culprit to the fantasy culprit government. and there is a whole industry that does this. there's something called fox news on cable tv. you should turn this on sometime and check check it out. well, the name i should give this obviously glenn beck. mnd owes in the steers. turn him on any day of the weekly this into his radio show and it's the end of the world have a great straitjacket. it's always buy some new path, some new amazing fear. interesting fact about land

that. did you know he idolizes are sorted idolizes orson welles? this is in his first book he talks about how he really likes orson welles. i was looking at this book and there's a photo of death during a radio of drama. i sent that picture looks familiar. it's the same pose as orson welles during the war of the worlds broadcast. as for the light went on in my head. he doesn't fire orson welles because of the guys politics or citizen kane of course. the martians are coming. and i suddenly got it. that explain it to me. >> your interview on npr. and not interfere you talk about the problem with the experts and democrats reliance on experts. the july in that and also answer the question. >> that's a good question.

it seems to me this is both the democrats, modern democratic strength as well as its achilles' heel as well as its expertise. and there's no individual where this is more clearly defined than barak obama. the man is produced by harvard at the university of chicago. of course that's what he is. he looks to academic expertise. you also look at the various state is indeed that the obama administration. most of them i agree with you they didn't go far enough or do things exactly the way it would've done them. yes we need a stimulus package in 2009. yes universal health insurance is a really good idea. the problem was that they would explain these things as things we needed because the experts said we needed to. the experts say we need to. and we know we need them because

of the experience of the 1930s because of keynesian economic theory and the work of the decades of economists. okay, fine. that is true. but what this leaves unstated is roosevelt when he was originally doing to assume its packages public works and universal social insurance, they did to universal health care that bad, but other insurance, they didn't say because the experts say we need to. they were not consulted on software. they talk about why you needed there. and that was completely messy from the obama administration. and also, there is reverence for expertise. by the way, this is some thing you follow the administration closely and come across virtually every day in their statements and way of doing things. he walks right into the conservative critique of

liberalism. the conservatives over the last generation have developed this critique of what they call the liberal elite. it is a phrase that we all should know and what they mean by that is the real ruling class in this country is educated people, people do want to graduate school. it's a fascinating very because it happens to be flatly incorrect nowadays. the invisible hand process in its grip. but it's not harvard grad nerve-racking which type kansas right now. it's people following the date tapes of the market. but that is fair critique and a hammer home with incredibly powerful rhetoric. like i say, they rip off of this great rhetoric from the 1930s, even 1890s. take notice of it. i dislike experts.

we are fans. you know, again and again they walk right into the buzz saw. then those troops over the top. you know, here we come. it's just like a man, if there survived in smart, why haven't they looked at -- it's not just me talking about the strategy. but the whole body of literature are talking about conservative populism. this is a well-known phenomenon. but the democratic leadership in this city never figures out how it democrats counter right-wing populism? maybe there is a way they could be populous in their own right. could there be such a thing? i'm sorry, i talk about this way too much as you can see. i blab about this constantly and i'm shutting up now. yes, sir. >> how did conservatives get economically disadvantage.

they find out in wisconsin and ohio. the first thing i want to say as i went to the tea party gatherings and read a lot of their literature. i try my best. i read a lot. the one thing that i understood almost immediately after hanging around these people and going to their ballets is they are not blue-collar people by and large. they tend to be small business people and they also tend to be fairly well off. and i went to a rally in denver or come i.t. party rally in denver and i met a man who was wearing a mascot. at a protest rally. i had never seen that before. [laughter] that was the first time i ever saw that.

you know, they have conventions, too. they have one every here come the chance of this conventions typically have a trade show attached to it, where they saw one another thing. but you know, you say what you like about opera by wall street. they don't do that. they don't have a tradeshow where everyone can go down there and buy out the string. by the way, i meant this yardstick consumer. i've got a house full of this stuff now. one of my favorite tea party presence is commemorating the march on washington. did the army issued this back in 1932, solid silver coins? so it tends to be a movement of more affluent people generally speaking small business people, at least that's what i found or what i think. but their rallies also aren't that huge. you have one big one here and september of 2009 great but by

and large it's usually a couple hundred people or sometimes even smaller than that. they were the vanguard of the moment. lots of other people how to language, the big megaphone, the money and their own tv channel amplifying everything they say. i'm also blue-collar people, we know from the polls and from the election results of 2010 heard what these guys were selling them like that embody. i mean, look at what happened in the state of wisconsin. now we think such a protest against walker, but have to take it that way? i grew up in the midwest. wisconsin is known for this left-wing tradition, this progressive tradition. it's not a radical tradition. up until a few years ago, there were lots of very liberal members of that state's congressional delegation and they just got wiped out in 2010. it did get replaced by moderates. they got replaced by people who

think that was sure of the greatest work of literature of all time. that's who can replace them. the state went from one and all the way to the other. and they did all kinds of polling on this and that was largely working-class people who changed sides. that is to change sides. now skywalker consensus we are vehicle until it cracked down on collective bargaining and the state. people go you know, people are furious. you have these gigantic protests in madison, 100,000 people outside the capitol building and it's an inspiring sight, but it's sight of people whose backs are to the wall. people who are looking at the ruination of their way of life and are fairly desperate. so i mean, those people, when i was covering this for harper's magazine they went out a year ago when the protests were going on and went to an anti-walker rally at the prolabor rally in a

small town. i've never seen something like that before. they met at the vfw hall and marched all around this tiny town. people are honking their horns. a lot of solidarity. an impressive sight. but also people who are in deep, deep, deep trouble is what it is. and let's hope that the democrats can figure out how to bring those people back this time around. i certainly hope they do. i should shut up. yes, sir. >> a terrific way of putting things. suppose the democrats had taken on business or at least wall street at the same vehemence in same lack of apology that the republicans show and going after government. to what extent do you think the democratic officials could have

harnessed some of the anger that the tea party people have shown. for example, let us assume that the bailouts for necessary, which obviously cannot say i'm that they were necessary so they said this is terrible. these guys were a bunch of these. but they got us over a barrel so we have to. had we taken that attitude come you think it would've made a difference. my god, yes. >> at the bailouts -- i'm sorry, keep going. the sub arch of the question is into what you attribute the failure of democrat elected officials to take that path to? >> those are two really good questions. let me just say first about their failure is very cold at the center. they were called to bipartisanship and stability. that is what they think this is all about. when barack obama was running for president, i know he said

that stuff about we come from the states and blue states and wear purple and said all those great things about bipartisanship and stability. i always assumed that was more demand. i did didn't know that was the main thing he believed in. i was kind of surprised by that. every presidential candidate says things like that. as things are appropriate initiative of things. that's the right thing to say. by the way, i'm a big fan of barack obama. i went to chicago for pin today. he's easily the greatest speaker of my generation. his rhetorical gift is extraordinary. i've met them in person. he is a brilliant man and if you do things slightly differently he could be one of our great presidents. i've no doubt about that. but we did miss playtest, still boggles my mind. i'm just going to give you a short taste of the last chapter of the book is all about the bailouts and huckabee event differently.

that is always and i was surprised to find their bailouts in in the 1930s? contents noa and nine. no one talked about this. thursday the three of four references in the entire work of the punditry and that crucial period. herbert hoover started feeling a things in either 31 or 32. i forgot. it outraged people in exactly the same way occurred till outstayed. there's incredible cronyism. the man who was the head of this bailout agency who attend calvin coolidge's vice president and he put them in charge of this agency of one point suddenly quit, went home to chicago and a couple weeks later resurfaced as president of the bank and demanded a bailout. [laughter] and he got one. he got one on the public just

creamed. they couldn't believe it. teachers in chicago hadn't been paid for something like two years and here is this guy getting a flattish handout. okay, so franklin roosevelt. how do you think he reacted? okay, so franklin roosevelt. how do you think he reacted? in the spirit of bipartisanship. how do you think he reacted? in the spirit of bipartisanship. no. he went after these guys. these are some of his most famous beaches or denunciations of the a lot that we are rewarding the people at the top economic army is starving. he said it was like that. when you get to office he didn't stop doing the bailouts. he did then differently. he did them in a way to ensure basically to restructure the economy. the things they did back then are astonishing. they did it to deliberately restructure the economy so wall street wasn't in charge anymore. they build up financial institutions from the bottom. they would go to mom-and-pop

s&ls. they go to cattle auction houses up in the great plains, bail them out. and they would go to the bank's that they would yell out and fire the management. and when they didn't like the banks in the city, they would start one. they did amazing things to restructure the financial system. and of course a company out of the this sort redrick and the fdic, glass-steagall, regulatory crackdown of banks at the same time is what you do. but i was never even mentioned today. okay, i've got to shut up. yes, sir. >> .shut up. one makes me incredibly angry and this drives me to a certain questions. what has happened to the poor people of this country. how the democrats lost their voice with regards to a poorer community? i will take note of this because

an obama speech, it was pointed out that he never mentioned the word poverty. and i'm going to make this accusation again. in your book, the index is no mention of the word poverty. >> that's because it's not a proper noun. >> no really, i kind of feel that there is a silent -- they are a big fan of poor measures of this country and they have no voice whatsoever. >> that is not somehow. come on, this is the land of the dollar. this is like you have a voice city of money. >> otherwise the democrats have dollars, so why do they not use it to give voice to those people? >> you're asking me to gabriel senecal. and i am going to decline. i'm going to decline the invitation. where the action and the

movement to empower have actually working class people, people who do have jobs and have meek -- to earn a living above the poverty level, but we should be on the democratic side, should be voting democratic, but are increasingly move to the republican party. that is for the big change has to happen. we have time for one more? one more. >> picking up where you left off, does it make sense for the working class in america, specifically the american labor movement, to continue to support the democratic party given how they responded to the recent switch check card? >> bag both houses of congress. they'll promise all promise to delivery. and this is another example of this kind of, you know, they can't play the game. something i pointed out in what's the matter with kansas is when people are members of the

union, it is like something psychological happens in a become a liberal. what it is as they start to understand economic issues from a different perspective rather than the one you see on tv and reading the newspapers newspapers all the time and they understand they have a voice in an economy where they can have a voice. by eric judea. >> the only other is what is the option? >> a way that brings positive change, what is the alternative for the american labor? >> they are of the team spot. the two-party system is essentially locked in. it is written into law.

i would love it. i mean, the day we have competitive third parties would be fantastic. but the labor movement is in big trouble these days. they have been declining for years. their strength is at an all-time low. they are ready to finish the not. it's really frightening. at least they're showing. trump is a fiery guy. not like back in the 70s. probably the 80s and they were just, you know, they just didn't care. at least they are showing some say. but it is day or that they get taken for granted by the democratic party in the same way if you like i do not sure many people in this room feel they do well. and it is just absolutely maddening. that's the answer? to that republicans get in and

do their worst? there is no answer to that question. just to organize, organize, organize. thank you all for coming. [applause] >> every weekendfrom the booktv offers 40 hours of programming focused on nonfiction authors and books. watch it here on c-span 2. >> each year booktv brings in several events across the country. here's a look at the upcoming fairs and festivals we plan on covering this year. the first stop will be the savanna book festival and savanna, georgia over presidents' day weekend.

>> and now, david kennedy, director of the center for crime prevention and control recounts development and execution of his plan to curb inner-city violence in boston in the 1990s. boston youth murders were cut by two thirds after installation of the program and is now in place over 70 cities, including chicago, washington d.c. and